UPDATE: ChargePoint v. SemaConnect Lawsuit

PlugInSites has obtained a copy of court documents that were filed in the ChargePoint, Inc. v SemaConnect, Inc. civil action in which ChargePoint alleges that SemaConnect is infringing on a number of patents related to EV charging networks.

ChargePoint is asking for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction barring SemaConnect from using the patents in dispute.

The lawsuit was filed by ChargePoint on Friday, December 15, 2017. Today, December 18, there are news reports that the Electrify America unit of Volkswagen plans to install 2,800 electric vehicle charging stations in U.S. cities by June 2019.

Electrify America is investing $2 billion over the next 10 years in the U.S. for Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) infrastructure and education as part of a settlement reached in the VW diesel emissions case. The reports say that Electrify America has selected SemaConnect as well as EV Connect and Greenlots to install those charging stations.

In the Plaintiff’s Memorandum in Support of Emergency Injunctive Relief, ChargePoint stated:

SemaConnect is in the process of entering into contracts, to be completed within the next 90 days, to deploy at least $16 million in competing EV charging stations to customers free of charge, and provide services related to those stations free of charge for the next eight years. ChargePoint believes that the size of that free offer is equal to more than half of the total available market for those charging stations during the offer period. Participants in the offer will receive free charging stations, as well as free network services and support for a period of 8 years. SemaConnect is able to do this because Volkswagen Group of America (through its subsidiary, Electrify America) is subsidizing SemaConnect’s offerings as part of Volkswagen’s commitment to spend $2 billion on zero-emission vehicle (“ZEV”) infrastructure and technology under settlement terms Volkswagen agreed to in the aftermath of an emissions-rigging scandal in 2015. Importantly, SemaConnect’s EV charging systems are attractive to Electrify America because of the functionalities they provide. Unfortunately, many of those functionalities infringe the Asserted Patents.

In an declaration filed with the court in support of the motion for emergency injunctive relief, a ChargePoint executive states that he has “been informed that Electrify America has allocated $85 million to providing free community charging stations to site hosts during the first cycle of the ZEV Investment Plan alone, and that a significant portion of that amount goes to SemaConnect as the exclusive provider of level-2 community charging stations.”